The use of camera systems is increasing due to the decreasing price of camera systems and the relative availability of processing power and data storage. Image sensors in cameras and camera systems are used in a variety of applications including automotive, medical, mobile, and security and surveillance. Often times, these applications include the need for more than one camera and to combine the images from the cameras, which may be presented to a user.
In some cases, there is a need to produce panoramic images or even 360 degree images. Panoramic or 360 degree images may be obtained by incorporating many cameras and combining images from the many cameras. However, each camera increases the cost of a camera system and combining many images from many cameras increases the processing time to generate a panoramic or 360 degree image. Delayed processing of many images may be particularly problematic when the desired processing is real-time. One solution for decreasing the number of cameras needed to produce panoramic or 360 degree images is to use wide-angle cameras. However, image distortion from the wide-angle lenses complicates matching and blending images, especially in real-time. As a result, an efficient method for combining images with lens distortion is desirable.